Over the past decade, modern air forces have been transforming their operational concepts to effects-oriented planning. In other words, there has been a shift from focusing on the number of aircraft required to destroy a single target, to the number of targets which may be destroyed with a single aircraft and the aggregated effect such attacks could yield. This change in methodology has led to the development of more sophisticated armaments. Accordingly, munitions manufacturers have attempted to keep pace by continuously advancing the field of guided missile weapons systems. These munitions must meet strict specification requirements and deliver dependable lethality.
Missile guidance solutions use a variety of technologies to guide the missile to an intended target. These can generally be classified into a number of categories, most notably: active, passive, and present. Passive systems generally use signals generated by the target. The most common of these are sound and infrared. Active systems typically require an input signal to guide them to an intended target. One common sort of signal is a controller who watches the missile and sends corrections to its flight path. Other techniques may involve using radar or radio control. New technologies are advancing active systems to fire-and-forget and beyond status.
Existing systems may be used to attack targets at fixed locations with increasingly complex techniques for guidance ranging from line-of-sight to GPS, and generally use fixed positions (e.g., stars) for augmented navigational control. These techniques have farther-reaching communication capabilities and increased navigational control. Accordingly, there is a need for new data transfer methods and processes to accommodate these emerging technologies.